Stefano Passerini

Stefano Passerini

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - Helmholtz Institute ULM GERMANY

Stefano Passerini is Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Helmholtz Institute Ulm (Ulm, Germany) since January 1, 2014. Formerly Professor at the University of Muenster (Germany), he co-founded the MEET battery research centre at the University of Muenster (Germany). His research activities are focused on electrochemical energy storage in batteries and supercapacitors. Co-author of more than 300 scientific papers (H-Index of 52), a few book chapters and several international patents, he has been awarded in 2012 the Research Award of the Electrochemical Society Battery Division. Since 2015 he has been appointed as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Power Sources.

Research stay at UC3M: DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AND CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Project: "Preliminary investigations on anion insertion in multi-layer graphene from ionic liquid-based electrolytes"
The project aims to investigate, for the first time, the capability of multi-layer graphene to host negative ions and, therefore, to evaluate its potential employment as positive electrode material in electrochemical energy storage devices.

Similarly to graphite, graphene is a redox-amphoteric host and should therefore be able to intercalate not only cations (such as Li+) but also anions. This feature could allow the utilization of multi-layer graphene as active material also on positive electrodes. Compared to graphite, however, multi-layer graphene possesses smaller particle size and larger interlayer spacing, which can facilitate the insertion process that is kinetically hindered in graphite electrodes. Furthermore, they can limit the strain induced by the insertion of large anions. Moreover, the larger surface area of multi-layer graphene might provide additional capacity due to double-layer formation.

The primary goal of this work is to gain a deep fundamental understanding of the anion insertion process, which, given the peculiar features of multi-layer graphene, might considerably differ from other conventional carbons (e.g., graphite). This would enable to identify structure-property relationships between multi-layer graphene and the inserted anionic species and, hence, to develop host-guest combinations to be employed in high performance energy storage devices.

Stay period: ABR 2016 - SEP 2016